Chapter 01 · 0:00The 917 As Useful Folly
"The 917 was the ultimate beast among racing cars, a dramatic entrance. And by today's standards, of course, sheer madness. But from today's perspective, when I myself wouldn't be responsible for such audacity anymore, I see the entire 917 project as quite useful folly. This display of power by the small sports car company laid the foundation for the image that people believe Porsche is capable of anything, if only they set their minds to it. The 917 operated at the limit, no matter how you looked at it, in terms of performance, its aerodynamic feasibility, its controllability by the drivers, the company's handling, and the compatibility of the Piech and Porsche families."
I did a story a while back on the Porsche 917. But then I found this autobiography right here. What I just read from it's from the man himself, Ferdinand Piech. I finally got my hands on his book, which was printed in German. So once I translated it to English, I found there's an entire chapter that he wrote on this Porsche 917 project.
I wanted to do another episode on this car because with Ferdinand Piech's autobiography, it adds some great detail to the story that I didn't have before. Right there at the end of his quote, he mentions the Piech and Porsche families. This was Ferdinand Piech. He's the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, the founder of the company. We'll get back to this dynamic right here. You'll see as we get through this story, this family dynamic he's talking about. So we'll get back to that a little bit later.
Chapter 02 · 1:40Finding Piëch’s Missing Details
Ferdinand Piech made a big gamble. He threw down almost two-thirds of the entire company's annual budget to make this race car. He wanted to win the 24 hour Le Mans. Here's how he said it right from his autobiography right here. He says,
"Thus in 1968 came the riskiest car of my life, the 917. An undertaking I wouldn't have dared undertake later in my career. Commissioning 25 exorbitantly expensive cars with a convincing but unproven engine configuration. All built straight from the drawing board."
So a couple things right here. Not a lot of time to get this thing done. They had to move quick. There was no time to build mock-ups and prototypes. It was straight to production once they made their move. And you'll see, Piech knew what he wanted to do, but there's just this small window of opportunity here that he jumps on. That's the key. Piech continues on in his book. He says,
"The concept was audacious and simple. We combined two six-cylinder engines to create a 4.6-liter 12-cylinder, assuming we could manage the problem of the enormous crankshaft with a central power takeoff. In my diploma thesis in Zurich, I had calculated that this type of central power takeoff was vibrationally unproblematic. Then I asked Hans Metzger if he felt confident enough to design the engine so that we could order 25 units without having run any of them beforehand. He said yes, he felt confident enough. If there had been a single flaw in the whole project, we would have had a multimillion dollar unsellable mess sitting in our yard."
Chapter 03 · 2:55Ordering 25 Cars Without Testing
Ferdinand Piech is 30 years old right here. That's out of his autobiography. He's looking back. He pulls the trigger on this project, orders up 25 Porsche 917s without a prototype. Like he just said, it was the riskiest car of his life. There's more amazing comments from Piech straight out of his book. We'll get into it.
Chapter 04 · 4:10Why Iteration Beats Perfect Planning
Back to the Porsche 917. I have the autobiography here of Ferdinand Piech. We're going to look at it. But for all the details, this entire story from start to finish, I have another great book that I read right here by auto expert Peter Morgan. It's titled 'Porsche 917: The Winning Formula.' It's published back in 1999.
We got to find out how Porsche pulled this off, creating this car. It wasn't just a one-man show. As much as it might seem like it was, it wasn't. It's a whole team of people here. Here's Peter Morgan's intro from his book right here. He says,
"Of course, other racing cars can claim glittering track records, but none can claim to have left such a legacy. The 917 never competed in a World Championship Grand Prix or at the Indy 500. Yet this sports car was measurably faster than contemporary Grand Prix machines. And on the course for which it was designed, Le Mans, it wrote a new chapter in the pursuit of maximum speed. In its second generation, it became simply the fastest racing car of its time."
So there's another part of the story right here: iteration. It's all through the book by Peter Morgan. They had to improve this car and perfect it as they raced it. They didn't have time to do it beforehand in development, in the shop. It was live action iteration. That was the key to the 917, as we're going to find out here in a minute. And why we're still talking about this car more than 50 years later.
Even with this newly designed Monster V12 engine, Porsche's original design was not great. But the determined engineers and drivers relentlessly tested and studied and tweaked the initial car until they found this perfect combination. The formula for success was literally hammered out with constant trial and error, from the racetrack back into the shop, then over and over again trying to find this perfect balance.
That excerpt that I read just touched on a few key things. So two key points. It said the car was designed for Le Mans, specifically. That's the first thing to remember. The goal for Porsche was to build a car that would win the 24-hour Le Mans. And then that quote from Peter Morgan's book also mentions this. In its second generation, it became the fastest racing car of its time. And it's the second generation, or it's these improvements that the team made to the 917, which made it completely unstoppable on the track. So we got to get into why the car wasn't good from the very start. Porsche developed this V-12 engine for the new 917.
Chapter 05 · 7:05Le Mans 1969 Speed And Tragedy
The new race car had 550 horsepower. That's an insane amount of power back in 1969. But there was a problem. The car was unstable. There was too much power. So especially at high speeds, the back end of the car wouldn't stay on the track. It was lifting up off the ground and weaving back and forth across the entire width of the track.
So the drivers were leery. Some of them called the car undrivable, and the engineers couldn't figure it out for a while. Back to Ferdinand Piech in his autobiography. An incredible quote right here out of the book that I gotta read. He's the head of this program, Piech. And he's admitting this car was powerful, but maybe a little unstable. Here's how he says it in his book. Listen to this.
"The factory drivers complained about the car's unruly manners. They were afraid to fully explore its capabilities. Seasoned Speed Demons described a feeling, quote, as if the 917 would collapse in on itself from sheer power. Parts of it did indeed collapse. The engine's intake of air was so dramatic that it could happen that the rear window was sucked into a smashing socket."
Listen to that from Piech. He goes, "Factory drivers complained about the car's unruly manners. They were afraid to fully explore its capabilities." That's incredible. He says, "season speed demons described a feeling as if the 917 would collapse in on itself from sheer power." That's Piech right there out of his autobiography. So the 24-hour Le Mans, 1969, Porsche enters these cars right away. This is the goal. They enter the cars right into the race, 1969. They learn here that the car is a long way from perfection.
The 917 was the fastest car on the track, based on the practice laps, but raw speed is only part of the equation at Le Mans. Of the three 917 cars that entered the race, one had to drop out from an oil leak. Another 917 car crashed on the very first lap. And the driver, John Wolfe, he was killed in the crash. The third car, after building up a lead of almost 50 miles by the 21st hour of the race, blew its transmission and had to drop out as well. So none of the 917s finished the race in 1969.
Porsche had a big problem. They had a beast of a car that could blow by everybody on the straightaways with a 30 mile per hour speed advantage. But the car had major engineering issues that had to be sorted out before Porsche had any chance at winning Laman. Now we go back to Ferdinand Piech. He's the grandson of the founder of the company, Ferdinand Porsche. So I learned all about this guy from Peter Morgan's book, Ferdinand Piech, who was just this young guy in the late 1960s, he was quite a character. The book goes into the full history of how Piech rose up the ranks at Porsche with his very aggressive personality.
Chapter 06 · 10:15Piëch The Typhoon Inside Porsche
I'll read this because it gives you a good idea of who we're dealing with here. Ferdinand Piech. If you're not familiar, Peter Morgan's book says,
"By the time he completed his engineering degree at Zurich and gained his diploma in 1962, Piech knew the workings of the automobile and the Porsche Company inside and out. But he had one other essential characteristic that was to mark him out as special: energy. He was a born achiever, who, with the benefit of youth, would not accept that there were limitations to anything in life."
Here we go. This is the force of nature that we're going to talk about. As it turns out, the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, this is the type of person that you would want to head up this entire effort to build the ultimate race car from scratch, right here, the 917. This is somebody that you want to do it, someone who would not accept limitations to anything. So the book goes on a little bit more about Piech, this young lightning rod who's just shot out of a cannon, and he wants to win races and he wants to run the entire company. So Peter Morgan explains it.
"Even at this early stage in his career, the young Piech had no doubt that he had to quickly establish his credentials as a future head of Porsche. His progress in his new job could be likened to an approaching typhoon. Fueled by a relentless impatience for change, disagreements over working practices and design became the norm wherever the young Piech's influence extended. But Ferry Porsche, Piech's uncle, was not slow to appreciate the qualities of his nephew. After only two years, despite being from the other side of the family and despite undoubted boardroom resistance, Farry Porsche promoted Piech to head the development and test departments. In truth, he had almost hijacked the job anyway."
I love that description right here. The author says Piech at his job could be "compared to an approaching typhoon." So now you can see the force of nature behind the Porsche 917, this guy Piech. And he had the ultimate goal to win the 24 hours of Le Mans. We can now just imagine after the 1969 Le Mans race, with one of the drivers getting killed in the crash, the other two cars breaking down. I'm sure Piech is not amused at what's going on at this point. And even to add to the frustration, that third 917 car had a lead of 50 miles when the gearbox issue happened on that 21st hour of the race and it didn't finish.
Chapter 07 · 12:50John Wyer And The Rulebook Loophole
So Piech needed to make his next move, and it was a move that would shock the racing world. What Piech did is he went out and he recruited one of the most accomplished and respected guys in racing to lead that next year 917 team. He recruited John Wyer. So let's go to the book, Peter Morgan. He says,
"Meanwhile, in Europe, two old enemies had struck up an accord. It is difficult to think of two more different personalities than John Wyer and Ferdinand Piech. Pieche was impulsive, deeply political, and turned on by engineering challenge. Wyer, nearly twice the Austrian's age, was of the old school, deeply pragmatic, and one who had learnt by hard work and experience. Their backgrounds too were opposites."
So we know a little bit about Ferdinand Piech. What's the deal with this guy, John Wyer? Why would Piech want to hire somebody who, just like the book says, was so opposite? Not just different personalities and ages, but different nationalities. John Wyer was from England. It was a totally new concept for Porsche to hire someone outside of the company and outside of the country to head up their racing team.
But there's a perfectly good reason Piech wanted Wyer because he was one of the best to ever do it. And I've done an entire episode on John Wyer. I read a book called 'Racing with the David Brown Aston Martins.' And it was authored by John Wyer himself. It was a great book, and he talks all about his time with the David Brown Aston Martins in the 1950s.
So this was all about a decade beforehand. And I don't want to spoil the story, but they called it Aston Martin's finest hour was in back in 1959. John Wyer is running that race team for about a decade. Then Wyer goes to Ford and helps develop the iconic GT40s to go up against Ferrari in the Ford versus Ferrari Wars of the 1960s. And then Wyer starts his own team, JW Automotive Engineering, and he wins Laman in 1968 and 69 with the Ford GT40s.
This is one of the best team managers anywhere. And Ferdinand Piech wants to hire him to run the Porsche 917s for that 1970 racing season. So with all this being said now, you might be wondering, well, why would John Wyer want anything to do with Porsche? He seems to be doing just fine. Why would he go for Piech's pitch to join up with Porsche? Well, it turns out John Wyer had enormous respect for what Porsche was doing.
First of all, they found a major loophole in the racing rule book that allowed them to create this beast of a car in the first place. It was actually a new rule that limited the engine capacity to just three liters for all prototype cars. But the new rules also said that the engine capacity for the sports car category could be as high as five liters. So what was considered a sports car? Under the new rules, to qualify a car to race at Le Mans as a sports car, the manufacturers had to build at least 50 cars as real vehicles that could be sold to customers. And then the minimum requirement was dropped from 50 to 25.
Now Porsche noticed that and they said, we can build 25 cars and race in that larger five-liter class, the sports car class. And that's exactly what they did. And I should add this these rules were written in 1968, and they're set to expire at the end of the racing season in 1971. So going into this entire 917 effort, Porsche always knew that their window for this endeavor was just three years, and they knew the rules would change after 1971. So they knew all this going into it, but they did it anyway.
Back to our question on why John Wyer would want anything to do with Porsche. He saw what they were up to, and then the way that Porsche exploited the rule book, it didn't bother Wyer in the least. So Peter Morgan in his book, he says, he says,
"Wyer had little concern for the dismay and surprise being shown by the CSI at the way their rulebook had been abused. Wyer applauded Porsche for their resourcefulness and was in awe of the huge resources that were available to build such a racing car."
So John Wyer is paying attention to Porsche and what they're doing. He's impressed by the firepower that they're deploying into this 917. Once Piech reached out to Wyer, and even though the book says John Wyer was quoted as stunned when he was initially approached by Porsche, it wasn't long after that the deal was done. So now Wyer's going to lead a team of Porsche 917s in the racing season, 1970 and 1971.
Along with Wyer was his sponsor, Gulf Oil. And so the Wyer team would become known as the Gulf Porsches, with that light blue and orange color. Those colors that everyone can picture now in their minds, because these cars would become iconic. We'll get into that in a minute, but you can't forget about Piech, this force of nature who wouldn't accept failure.
He wasn't going to hand over the entire program and all his hopes and dreams of winning Le Mans to just this one guy, John Wyer. Ferdinand Piech is way smarter than that. He's always a couple moves ahead of everyone else. This is a guy who was known as sort of a dictator, and he would he was known for igniting in-house rivalries and confrontations just to keep people motivated and on their toes. Piech was not about to let a Wyer Porsche 917 take any headlines. He didn't want one single person taking the credit for any success that he was planning to have in the next two years.
Chapter 08 · 18:35Daytona Debut And Two-Team Warfare
Especially in an Englishman like Wyer. This was about Porsche, the company, not a team manager or a driver or anyone else. So in a brilliant move here, Piech creates a second 917 team. An in-house team that would race directly against John Wyer's team with the same exact cars. And Piech kept this entire thing a secret for as long as he could. So we get into the first big race of the 1970 season. The 24 hours of Daytona. This was the very first race of this newly designed Porsche 917 K, the short tail version that everyone is now so familiar with. John Wyer has two 917s in this race.
The Gulf Porsche 917s were the big attraction before the race as these cars are rolled out onto the track. But there's something that caught John Wyer's attention probably more than anything else that day. The in-house Porsche racing team called Porsche Salzburg rolled out their own 917s onto the track to challenge Wyer's team. So let's look at Peter Morgan's description of this moment right here. He says,
"But while everyone else's eyes were on the three brand new blue and orange Gulf Porsches, the Wyer men couldn't take their eyes off the other 917Ks at Daytona. Painted white with red flashes, the 917K was driven by two of the previous year's top factory drivers, Vic Alford and Kurt Ahrens, and entered by Porsche Salzburg. The car was to the latest specification, including the new short tail."
So there it is right there. If John Wyer and his team didn't already understand how this was going to work, it was at this moment right here when they all realized Ferdinand Piech and Porsche were not playing. Here's another 917 car identical to their golf 917s, lining right up against them in the 24 hours of Daytona. Just some friendly competition is probably how Piech tried to make it seem. On the surface, but it was anything but friendly. In the world of racing, this was a wake-up call to John Wyer and his team, and something that they'd have to deal with for the next two years.
John Wyer's team would steal the show at Daytona. The Wyer Porsche 917s with that golf oil livery finished first and second place, and they shattered the track record by 190 miles. Now the Porsche Salzburg team, the 917 car that wasn't able to finish the race, it had a gas tank malfunction. But that didn't really matter. The game was officially on for John Wyer and everybody at Porsche. The two rival 917 teams now would push each other race after race, just exactly how Ferdinand Piech drew it up.
Here's Peter Morgan, and he explains this in his book. He says,
Piech was after all a Porsche himself, and he wanted to see the company succeed by staying with Salzburg in 1970 and then Martini the following year. Piech maintained a hold on what was happening. It didn't all become Gulf-Wyer."
So exactly what we're talking about. It was a very smart move, you can see right here. Piech knew he had the amazing car. He could win any race, but he wanted to have two separate teams driving the car. And this was so the highly respected and accomplished legend John Wyer.
He couldn't take too much control of the entire situation. So though now the racing season's officially underway in 1970, the Gulf Porsche cars have just taken first and second place at Daytona. And the modified second generation 917 is making shock waves in the racing world after smashing the track record in its first race in this modified form. But the in-house Porsche Salzburg team and John Wyer's Gulf Porsche team have officially set their sights now on the biggest race of the year, the 24-hour Le Mon, just a few months away.
I just said it was the second generation modified version of the 917. What changed? This is a huge part of the story right here. So now we have to go back to the quote earlier that I read it when I started the episode. And the reason I began the episode with a passage from the book from Peter Morgan is because it mentions the key to the story in just two sentences. It said the 917 was designed to win Le Mans. But in its original form, the car wasn't great. And then we talked about all this already, but the last sentence of that opening passage that I read, it said, quote, in its second generation, it became simply the fastest racing car of its time.
Chapter 09 · 23:20Zeltweg Breakthrough Creates The 917K
I said this was a story about iteration as much as anything else. The constant improvement and tweaking. So how'd they solve the puzzle? We have to back up a few months before the 24 hours of Daytona race, to the previous October of 1969. John Wyer scheduled a three-day test session at Zeltwig, it's this racetrack in Austria, with both rival 917 Porsche teams present to figure out how to improve this car for that Daytona race.
The two teams laid out every possibility on the table, trying to figure out how to keep this back end of the car down on the track without creating too much drag, which was an absolute must for Piech. Piech wanted high power, low drag. So Porsche engineer Peter Falk, he was there at this test session. He had just recovered from a major accident. When he was testing a car and he hit a deer, he flew out of the car and broke some ribs, and he was in the hospital for a long for quite a while, but he was released from the hospital just in time to attend this three-day test session at Zeltwig.
Here's how he sets it up right here. Peter Faulk is in the book. He said this,
"We had done some tests on the South Loop of the Nurbergring, but it was not enough, Falk recalls. We hadn't had enough time, you know, long enough to stay with the problem and really understand it."
He's talking about the aerodynamics of the car right here. They just didn't fully understand this problem yet. But now they get their chance to immerse themselves. And here's where the two Porsche teams would make the major breakthrough that led to that 917K model, the short tail that would dominate the track for the next two years. Here's Peter Morgan's book. He says,
"There are many different versions of what happened at this test, because as a consequence, the handling of the 917 was transformed. Almost at a stroke, the car became the racing driver's dream, devoid of all the earlier nervousness. It is not surprising, therefore, that everybody wanted the credit. And consequently, everybody claimed it."
So the car was transformed. Both rival Porsche teams are right there working out the kinks on the car. They figure it out almost at a stroke, it said. And then both teams, of course, they all claim the credit for what happened. But what did they do? What did they find here? They discovered, so the of course, the book debates who discovered it first, but at the test track, they discovered a major flaw with the car. There was no downforce at the tail, but the air wasn't even flowing to the rear of the car at all, where the where the air could hit the spoiler and create downforce.
They decided to build up the tail with some sheet metal that they had at the track. And they built up the tail high enough to where the air could hit it and push the car back down to the road at high speeds. And then without creating hardly any additional drag. So this was the big breakthrough right here. And it was all just about spending enough time here, trial and error on the test track for a couple of days straight with this highly experienced team of drivers and engineers from both Porsche teams. Then it became obvious to all of them, like almost right at the same time.
The book goes into detail on the background of each one of the team members who were present that day. There's another famous story about how one of the drivers noticed that there were smash bugs all over the front of the car. But then as you look to the back, across the rear spoiler, there's hardly any dead bugs stuck to the car in the back as they raced around the track. So that could only mean one thing, that the air was not hitting the rear spoiler at all. So that's another version of the story and how all these memorable days at the track played out. So unanimous agreement on the results here.
There was no disputing the time on the clock. The car was several seconds faster around the track than before these changes, and the drivers noticed almost immediately how much better the car handled and performed. Here's one more description from the book on how they operated on this 917 right there on the track that day. It says, so since the test was under the control of the wired team, Kuogi and Davies went to work with their cutters, aluminum sheet, self-tapping screws, and duct tape. The result was significantly more upswept than the 917 PA's rear deck. Now the teams are pumped, they're probably just beside themselves in amazement at this huge leap in performance that they just had given this 917. But there's one more big problem here.
They had to show the newly designed car to Ferdinand Pieche, the boss. And they had to explain why they just built a giant wedge on the tail of his car. Because Piech was all about zero drag. He did not want drag. That was his pet peeve, and everybody knew it. So there's a great story in the book about Peter Falk. He's one of the Porsche Salzburg engineers at the time. And he's nervous to show the car to Pish. He had to drive down to this little airstrip near the test track so he could pick up Pieche. Ferdinand Peeche is flying in from Porsche headquarters to check out the progress. And Peter Falk drives over to pick him up. Knowing that he's about to show his boss his 917 with this giant built-up tail that they all just screwed onto the back of his car with sheet metal. Falk says he drove down to that airstrip with his quote, heart beating.
He was so nervous to tell Peich what they did to the car. So he warns Piech when he gets out of the airplane. He says, the car looks a little different than the last time you saw it. If you can imagine Falk, he's just trying to like break the news to Piech nice and easy before he actually drives him back up to the test track. And Falk adds this in the in the book. He says that when Piech finally saw the car, quote, his face dropped. So in the end, though, Piech was fine with the changes to the car because it was so much better. He couldn't argue with the time and the results. So again, it's funny to read this full account because once all the guys notice that at the test track, they see that Piech was just going to be f okay with the change and that he was actually pretty excited about it.
Now everybody tries to take the credit for the idea. It's just classic. So they do admit in the book, though, eventually, they admit that it was a team effort that the day on the that day on the test track. It's just so funny to read about these two ultra highly competitive race teams right here. The stakes are sky high. They're putting their heads together on this test track to solve this major problem. And then they're trying to retell the story about who really came up with that solution. When in actuality, it's it's like they all, it all just dawned on them like all at the same time, what they needed to do. So P talks about this same thing here in his autobiography. Listen to this right here. He admits exactly what Peter Morgan was saying in his book. He was playing these two teams against each other the entire time. It's something he was known to do his entire career as an auto engineer and then as an executive for decades. This is what he was known for. And so, right out of his autobiography, right here, he says,
"Perhaps we hadn't worked enough on the 917's handling, because the 908 could be used to contest and win most of the season perfectly well. It wasn't until we joined forces with John Wire's golf team toward the end of the 1969 season that serious aerodynamic development work began. I played the English golf team against our own, but the joint result was a modified rear end that made the car more stable. In the rivalry between the John Wyer entries and our own team, the 917 became the overwhelmingly dominant endurance car of the early 70s."
And then finally, back to Peter Morgan's book right here, another amazing little detail. They had to get the car back to Porsche headquarters and then build a real tailpiece. They had to rip off this sheet metal contraption that they screwed on at the test track. So to make the final alteration, what would become the 917K? The K being a German word for Kurtz, meaning short tail. So they made this change to the car, and one of the designers explains in the book right here. He says, this is the quote from the book. He said, The height of the back was not made in the wind tunnel. It was just by rule of thumb. That's crazy right there. Just by rule of thumb, they built this thing up and finalized the short tail version of this car right here. So again, this brings me all the way back to the earlier passage I read at the beginning.
When I read that this car, in its second generation, became the fastest racing car of its time. This was it, right here. These changes that they made by building up the tail and giving the car the down force that it would need to hold it down to the track. This is the moment right here when the 917K would go on to dominate. The next race, right after all of this, is that 24 hours of Daytona, which we already talked about. That's where John Wyer's team finished first and second place with two of these 917K short tail cars that had the built-up rear. And the same tail that they used just a rule of thumb to get the height without a wind tunnel. And that's the same 917 car that's so iconic today.
So people still regard this as one of the greatest car designs in history. I did an episode on Horatio Pagani a while back. And that episode was all about how Horatio got his start. It was about the Pagani Zonda C12 and how he built that car. When I was learning all about Horatio, I stumbled on a video interview of him talking about his favorite car of all time. And it was this car right here, the Porsche 917. I couldn't even believe it. The interviewer was asking him what his favorite car was. So I was waiting for him to name one of his favorite Pagani models. But he just goes, It's the Porsche 917. And so I'm like, what is going on here? So he didn't stop there. Horacio started talking about how he collects scale models of the Porsche 917K. And he owns like 200 of these little scale models of this car. He doesn't stop there. He keeps going and he says, When I have my tea in the morning, I'll just grab one of my Porsche 917 models and I'll just stare at it while I'm having my tea in the morning. That's so cool. Which is Horacio with his tea and his model car.
Chapter 10 · 34:00Le Mans Wins And The Icon Era
Anyway, so these two rival Porsche teams, they literally hammered this thing out on this three-day test track session, and they created one of the most iconic car designs of all time. So I gotta finish this incredible story. We know how the 917K model was perfected now, and the two rival teams were pitted against each other by the mastermind Ferdinand Pieche. Then they all roll into Daytona in early 1970, and John Wire just crushes everyone else and he sets records. But we still have the big race coming up. After all of this, now the car was built to win Laman, and that hasn't happened yet.
They raced at Le Mon the year before, 1969. They had three 917s in that race and none of them finished. Even though they had the big lead in the 21st hour. No victory though, still. So what happens next? The 1970, 24 hour Laman would be the big victory for Porsche and the 917 K. The short tail version of the car would take the checkered flag finally. But it was not John Wire's golf car. It would be the in-house Salzburg team that delivered Porsche its very first victory at Le Mans. And this was a huge win for Porsche in so many ways, right here. It was the first victory at Le Mans after several years of battling Ford and Ferrari and just getting beat down year after year. They finally got him. It was also a year that Steve McQueen produced a movie that was titled Le Mans. And the star of the show was the Porsche 917K with that Gulf oil light blue and orange color.
Still to this day, people have a hard time remembering that it wasn't even the Golf 917 Porsche that won that race. It's such an iconic livery on the car that everybody now they remember that Gulf Porsche from the movie above everything else. Even the car that won. Now the Porsche 917 didn't just win in 1970, but the next year at the 1971 Le Mon, the 917 wins again. The second year in a row, and this time it's the Porsche 917K sponsored by Martini International. But then John Wire's team, JW Automotive Engineering, they finished second place with the iconic 917K Gulf Oil car. And then two Ferrari 512s, they finished third and fourth in that race, which I'm sure it made that first and second place finish even that much sweeter for Porsche.
Once that car was altered with the higher built-up tail, which created that 917K model, once the car hit that track, it completely dominated for two and a half years. Not just the 1970 and 71 Le Mans races. It won almost every race it entered in 1970, like seven out of the eight races. Then it dominated again in 1971. It took first place in another eight out of ten races. Porsche knew they would only have this small window of about three years to build this amazing car and make a serious run at a Le Mon victory. And not only did they pull it off, but they crushed the competition and they created one of the most iconic cars of all time. Still talked about to this day as one of the greatest ever.
It turns out that Porsche might be all done with racing the amazing 917s in 1971, but now they'd go on to develop some of the most epic Le Mon race cars ever created. Porsche would soon win Le Mans 10 times in the next 12 year span in the late 70s and the 1980s, with the Porsche 936, the 956, and then the 962. The book by Peter Morgan, Porsche 917, The Winning Formula. It's a great book. It has all these different angles, the complete story from everybody that was involved in this project. But when I found the chapter in Ferdinand Pieche's autobiography, it was incredible.
Chapter 11 · 37:55VW Money And Family Politics
The name of the chapter, the title of the chapter in his book was quote, The Wildest of the Wild, Portion 917. To hear it straight from the guy himself, we gotta go back to his book. Listen to this. Here's how he explained his reason for starting the entire project. If there's any one line out of all my car and racing stories I've done, this sums it up perfectly right here. Piech just says it right here, simply, quote, I couldn't resist the temptation to push the limits even further.
Here it is, he says.
"The kind we drove at the Targa Floria and the Nurbergring. Wherever we lined up at the starting line, we certainly had no trouble keeping the image of the air-cooled engine principle alive. I couldn't resist the temptation to push the limits even further and make better use of the five-liter displacement limit for sports cars than with the 908's three-liter eight-cylinder engine. The subsidies from the VW contract made it possible to think in completely new dimensions."
So Piech mentions the VW contract right there. Porsche had an engineering contract with Volkswagen to design the successor to the iconic VW Beetle. So with this money that they were making from VW, Pish used most of that money to build the 917. And then, so by the way, Porsche's design for the VW car, it never went into production. They made like almost 50 prototypes of this little car, the EA266, but the entire program was canceled. The money they made from that contract, though, with VW went toward the 917 program. So remember back to the first thing I read at the start of the episode here. There's the Piech and the Porsche family relationship that Piech mentions.
In his autobiography, I read it earlier. Now we know this guy Piech was completely juiced with energy and headstrong even at age 30. Listen to this. In his book, he talks about how he pulled this whole thing off. Even being from the other side of the Porsche family. He had his uncle, remember, we already said his uncle fairy Porsche. Peter Morgan said he was not slow to appreciate the qualities of his nephew. That's what Peter Morgan said in his book. Here's Piech on how he got his way and created this insane race car. He says,
"I was able to get my way with my uncle in private because we understood each other well from a technical point of view. Afterwards, within the family, he complained terribly about what nonsense it was. That in turn upset his family. How could you let Ferdinand get away with this again? This megalomania and all that."
That's incredible. It's Fairy Portia. He's hearing it. He's getting it from his side of the family. What are you doing? Letting Ferdinand trample over everyone at the company. What's going on, Fairy? What are you doing? Put your foot down. Stop this young man. So Piech continues on and explains how he got away with this entire 917 idea right here and how he dealt with his uncle Ferry Porsche. Piech says, quote,
"He let me get away with it because he liked it. He himself would never have done it. But as a follower, he happily tolerated the 917. However, this didn't go so far as him publicly endorsing it at the car's presentation. While it wasn't exactly common practice to present an extreme racing car at the Geneva Motor Show, we did it in 1969 because it was simply the most exciting thing Porsche had to offer. Ferry Porsche stayed away from the press conference. And even our press officer, Hunch von Hanstein, had more important things to do at the moment. So there I stood all alone with Gerhard Meiter, who, while our favorite Porsche driver wasn't exactly the ideal man for the 917, I had a queasy feeling about what I'd gotten myself into. Twenty-five hand-carved prototypes all at once, and nobody knew how good they'd actually be."
That's crazy right there. He let me get away with it because he liked it. He himself would never have done it, but as a follower, he happily tolerated the 917. That's peeche what he just said right there. Ferdinand took this thing on, and if the 917 bombed, it would have been on him alone. Nobody else at the Porsche family was going to take the hit if this 917 program crashed and burned to the ground.
Chapter 12 · 42:45The Final Push Past Limits
Ferdinand knew it, and he made it happen. So he continues on about the cars. He says,
"They were good. And once we had the inherent flaws of the 917 somewhat under control, they were fantastic. In retrospect, the Porsche 917 is certainly one of the greatest sports cars of all time."
That's from his book right there. One of the greatest sports cars of all time. Ferdinand Piech said it right there in his autobiography, published in 2002. People still say the same thing all the time, to this day. Think about it this way. When you see this car or hear somebody talk about this car, and you're wondering, where in the hell did this beast of a car come from? Like, how did this happen?
Ferdinand already told you,
"I couldn't resist the temptation to push the limits even further."
